In one month, on the centennial of the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first short story “Under the Moons of Mars,” the film John Carter will see one of the oldest science fiction protagonists returning to mainstream culture. But does mainstream culture know who this John Carter guy is? How many are aware he is immortal? A Confederate solider? A failed gold prospector? Chances are most people know none of this, nor are they aware that this action-flick complete originates from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also happens to be the inventor of Tarzan. Further, does everyone know Hugo Award and Pulitzer Prize famed author Michael Chabon is a screenwriter for the film?
Assuming most people know none of this, who exactly is the John Carter movie for? And what does it say about how the zeitgeist really regards classic pulp heroes?
The discussion of John Carter creates a nice absence of “I remember when” snobbery insofar as the first story is 100 years old. Meaning, like Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, not only has most of the prose passed into the public domain, but also the scholarship and criticism of this kind of work is similarly available to anyone who is interested.
In the books, John Carter is an immortal man who has seemingly always been 30 years old. He was a Confederate soldier who, after the war, tried to do some gold prospecting with a guy named James K. Powell. After Powell disappeared, John Carter went looking for him, hoping that the Apaches didn’t scalp his buddy. After entering a cave, John Carter bizarrely finds himself on the planet Mars. Because the gravity is different, JC discovers he has superhuman (and super-Martian!) powers of strength and agility. In this way, he’s a lot like everyone’s favorite orphan of Krypton: Superman.
The notion of someone coming from another planet, time, or dimension to an “alien” setting and acquiring superhuman powers because of the change of scenery seems to originate with the first John Carter story. But, this conceit is made all the more strange by the fact that John Carter was already immortal BEFORE the mysterious transportation from Earth to Mars. This is pretty complicated stuff for mainstream fiction stories written 100 years ago. John Carter had a science fiction background before the science fiction stuff starts happening to him.
Like Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who and Torchwood there’s more than one layer of weird going here. It’s not enough that Jack is immortal, but he’s also from the far-future AND another planet, even though Rose and the Doctor first meet him in WWII. For a 2005 audience, this is stuff non-science fiction fans can barely follow. John Carter’s similarities to Jack are striking not only because of the military service, but also the multiple layers of science fiction conceits.
This layering is interesting, because often when a new otherworldly element is added onto something already fantastical, it is perceived as overkill. For example, everyone hated it when Highlander 2 depicted Macleod and Ramirez not only as immortals but then retroactively as aliens from Planet Whatever. But maybe the screenwriters didn’t make a mistake. Maybe they were just paying homage to the roots of stories about immortals wielding swords against evil. (For further Highlander/ John Carter connections, consider this: Christopher Lambert’s first breakout film was Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan. And we all know who came up with Tarzan!)
Another example of a fish-out-of water character becoming a science fiction hero is found in the 1928 Philip Francis Nowlan novel Armageddon 2419 A.D. This one gave the world the character of Anthony “Buck” Rogers who, like John Carter, also had a strange experience in a cave, one that knocked him out for several centuries only to wake-up in the 25th century. Again, parallels to John Carter are prevalent with Buck. He’s kind of immortal owing to his advanced age combined with youthfulness and he’s bringing his old-world sensibilities to an alien one in heroic fashion. Buck Rogers, Captain Jack Harkness, and Superman, all discover that the world/time they find themselves in needs them in ways the world they came from doesn’t or can’t. And John Carter is the original gangsta of this premise. But if that’s true, how come no one’s heard of him?
Yesterday, I asked the Tor.com Twitter and Facebook followers who they considered to be the most famous between John Carter, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon. Flash was first, Buck second, and poor JC was dead last by a lot. Now, it’s possible Flash’s popularity is totally attributed to having a Queen song written about him (thanks @bhalpin!) but there’s probably a better reason for JC to be so absent from the public consciences. Unlike Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, he hasn’t appeared in as much media beyond the printed word. Sure, there have been comic book adaptations throughout the years and an immediately forgotten 2009 straight-to-DVD film, but unlike Buck and Flash, no TV shows, or radio serials precede that. In short, John Carter is really something only hardcore SF completists (like Michael Chabon) even know about.
This doesn’t mean the original book, A Princess of Mars, is bad at all. Upon revisiting it, I was totally impressed with the breathless prose, and the originality of the whole conceit, though I was bothered by what I would call the books’ flaws: The analogs between native “savages” of frontier era America and the Green Martians of Barsoom seem to be straight up racist. Yes, the book is from another time, and I’m all for biting one’s lip to tolerate various shortsighted aesthetics and appreciate the bigger picture. Society changes. However, John Carter didn’t change with it. Instead, he was turned in Buck Rogers, Superman, and then Captain Jack Harkness. And the thing is, Buck Rogers is slightly more progressive than John Carter, and Captain Jack Harkness is way more progressive than both.
This leaves me wondering as to the relevance of John Carter now. Don’t get me wrong, re-visiting the original book has gotten me super-pumped for the new film, and I actually have quite a bit of faith in Michael Chabon. But I’m a specialist, someone who cares about science fiction and its history and enjoys the novelty of seeing a big budget film reviving a 100-year old space fantasy epic. What about everyone else? Have the inherent characteristics of John Carter been transmuted into more memorable characters making a new John Carter paradoxically a faux-version of himself? John Carter is iconic not because he’s necessarily memorable, but because people who know what they’re talking about know he’s iconic. These people are not wrong at all. John Carter is cool, but I worry he’s not cool enough to deserve all this new attention.
If a bunch of people who’ve never heard of JC before this film suddenly become rabid fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs, then it’s a wonderful massive victory for reading. After all, there are 11 John Carter books. Take that, Harry Potter! But if all John Carter produces is collective head scratching, the character might be transported back to the planet of relative obscurity. Which is funny, because when it comes to a classic SF character concept, we’re all living in a post-John Carter world, whether we’re all aware of it or not.
Ryan Britt is the staff writer for Tor.com.
I’ve never fully agreed with the easy charge of racism, especially in light of the length & breadth of the series– or even just the first “trilogy.” The division between the Green & Red aliens certainly does hearken to the racist perceptions of white people in America towards Native Americans at the time, that is definitely true. I just think– well, the culmination of John Carter’s story involves brokering peace between the Green Martians, the Red Martians, the White Martians, the Black Martians & the Yellow Martians. Peace & unity! Edgar Rice Burroughs couldn’t have been ignorant of the fact that saying red, white, black & yellow in reference to Martian skin colours…would have pretty clear bearing on Earthling races.
Hmmm! It has been so long since I’ve read the books (30 years or so), that I didn’t even remember the immortality aspect of the story. I remember riding my bike to the bookstore when I was in Jr. High, to complete my brother’s collection of both Tarzan & John Carter books. When he moved several years ago, he gave me both full sets. After reading this, I think I’ll have to reread the books before going to see the movie. Thanks for the interesting perspective!
The notion of someone coming from another planet, time, or dimension to an “alien” setting and acquiring superhuman powers because of the change of scenery seems to originate with the first John Carter story. But, this conceit is made all the more strange by the fact that John Carter was already immortal BEFORE the mysterious transportation from Earth to Mars. This is pretty complicated stuff for mainstream fiction stories written 100 years ago. John Carter had a science fiction background before the science fiction stuff starts happening to him.
As a fan of Roger Zelazny, it amuses me to think that John Carter is really a lost child of one of the Amberite Princes. Say, Corwin. :)
When the trailer played during the Super Bowl, one of my friends asked, tongue-in-cheek, “Why are they making a movie about Noah Wyle’s character from E.R.?”
I have a special reason to care about the movie, beyond the fact that I loved the books as a kid and am excited to see Pixar’s first live action movie ever (the movie is directed by the same guy who directed WallE, for those following this at home) – due to a happy coincidence of naming my son after a maternal great grandfather and a paternal family name, I have my own John Carter at home. Of course, when I had a daughter my brothers tried to insist we name her Dejah Thoris. (We didn’t).
*waves to KJ upthread*
Good questions, Ryan. And the situation isn’t helped by Disney’s removal of the “Of Mars” part of the title, out of some bizarre fear that people would associate it with flops from the recent past.
I don’t think Carter is truly immortal. In the first book he states that while he has lived a very long time and that he has always been seemingly the same age, he knows he can die like other men and that he fears death. I’ve always suspected that Burroughs meant to imply (even though this was never explicitly stated or more fully explored by him) that perhaps martians had visited earth in the past via the same mode of transport Carter uses and that Carter has a little martian DNA (Burroughs’ martians have 1000 year life spans, though, he says, few make it that far due to the violent nature of their cultures). Still, the Highlander connection is valid (six degrees of Christopher Lambert?).
Regarding JC’s influence on SF, I think it’s even stronger and more direct than you state. In Superman’s original stories, before he could fly and move planets, Siegel and Schuster used the identical “lighter gravity” rational for his powers. Given Siegel’s love of Burroughs, there seems little question that JC (along with Philip Wylie’s “Gladiator”) is Superman’s direct antecedent. Flash Gordon likely owes his existence to JC as well, and since George Lucas has acknowledged FG as the direct inspiration for Star Wars, there’s yet another connection. Ray Bradbury credits Burroughs and JC for his love of SF, and James Cameron stated more than once that “Avatar” is his version of John Carter. Indeed, fans of the swashbuckling variety of space opera are still living in the universe that Burroughs built (and this doesn’t even count the real-life astronomers like Carl Sagan who first found their love of the stars kindled by JC).
Regarding the racism present in JC, as you point out, it would be a bit foolish to expect a story written a century ago to reflect modern sensibilities (to put it in perspective, Burroughs was born in 1875, when the US government was still engaged in open warfare with some of the native peoples of the plains and southwest). Still, if one looks closely at Burroughs’ depictions of American Indians in the Westerns he wrote and their SF analogs on Mars, there’s always a degree of admiration for even the most “savage” peoples, specifically the green-skinned Tharks. Remember that the Thark Tars Tarkas becomes Carter’s close friend and ally. In fact, on Burroughs’ Mars, the least admirable race is the white-skinned one. I think it’s also worth considering that the word savage didn’t necessarily have negative connotations for Burroughs. After all, he uses it constantly to describe Tarzan, who is, of course, the ultimate “Noble Savage.”
Sorry for the long-winded post, but I really have high hopes for John Carter, even though I’m fearful that Disney has sacrificed some of his two-fisted, pulpy goodness and turned him into yet another mopey, tragic protagonist in search of redemption.
John Carter was a Confederate soldier but also potentially much more. As far as he could recall he had always been 30 years old and his memories were spotty. This always intrigued me. As Ryan said it was a very cool layering of stories.
Understanding a bit about John Carter (and Dejah Thoris) gave me “insider” goosebumps when I first read Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast” back in the 80s… The main character there, DT , was of course named after Dejah, and the protagonists loved to visit Barsoom.
That novel alone made knowing about John Carter worthwhile.
@1 mordaci
I think I agree with you. I suppose I was made uncomfortable by the discussion of American Indians, and not really the various skin colors of the Martians.
But as @6 Wizard Clip points out, it sort of comes with the terrority in a novel this old.
@Everyone
I think re-reading these books is totally fun, and will get you super-pumped for the movie.
“Assuming most people know none of this, who exactly is the John Carter movie for? And what does it say about how the zeitgeist really regards classic pulp heroes?”
It’s for people who enjoy lively SF fantasy adventures. I doubt whether most viewers will know or care much about John Carter. However I think Edgar Rice Burroughs will have a fair degree of name recognition among the general public.
The JC series is my fave of the ERB books. I have had my copies of them for at least 45 years and some of the copies are pretty shopworn. I have read them too many times to count, so I do remember the backstory and all the relationships that are developed. JC also comes back from time to time to relate the stories to ERB, who is a relation of his, which is how the stories are written.
One of the reasons I enjoy Number of the Beast so much is because of the naming of JC and DT, and the romance involved with it. Had I known how much of a nerd my wife turned out to be, I might have tried to name my daughter Dejah Thoris.
I always knew that any movie would copout, and not film as the books were written. After all, wandering around Mars in nothing but furs and a jeweled belt would probably have earned a NC-17 rating.
People have accused the John Carter books of being another example of the “What These People Need is a Honky” trope, and there is some validity there, I suppose. A Confederate soldier/Southern gentleman saves the civilization of a group of native peoples, etc etc. But I reread the books about a year ago (after having repeatedly read the series start to finish as a less socially-aware pre-teen, ha!) and I was actually struck by how NOT racist they are. John Carter’s true love is a Red Martian. His best friend is a Green Martian. The White Martians are a bunch of human-sacrifice-practicing creeps. John Carter doesn’t see any inherent superiority or inferiority to any of the races he encounters. As an outsider, he’s able to use his acquired status and fame to unite the many peoples of Mars, but I don’t remember it being implied that this accomplishment had anything to do with him being an inherently superior race. I thought the series was kind of ahead of its time in many ways…none of that delightful imperialistic paternalism you so often see in older literature…
I am looking forward to it, as I grew up reading not the books of my own generation, but the books of my father’s generation that I found boxed up in our basement. Burroughs was one of my favorites, although I always preferred the Venus series to the Mars series, and my absolute favorites were the Pellucidar stories. And his work has held up much better over time than some of the other adventure fiction of the time, which is why they are forgotten, and his work lives on. We have gotten plenty of Tarzan on the big screen, and I am excited to see the planetary adventures making a debut. Hopefully, this film is the first of many.
As to the anachronistic charge of racism in the John Carter of Mars series, JC related that the red men were the dominant race of Barsoom and were descended from the original black, white, and yellow races. So Martian miscegenation produced the red race.
Was ERB slyly critcizing anti-miscegenation laws of his day? I don’t know. But I know that JC admired the form of each of the races of Barsoom and found allies and friends among them all.
Has anyone read the new Under the Moons of Mars anthology (aside from the Landsdale excerpt posted here)? Any opinions on it?
People who say the John Carter books are racist are missing something that would’ve been obvious when they were written: Carter is avoiding “redskins” when he is transported to a planet of “redskins” and falls in love with one.
I helped start a John Carter Teen Reading project to see if 12- 18 year olds still find the book captivating. The results are all favorable. I got into the books after seeing the film at a prescreening. You can see the student’s interviews here…
http://thejohncarterfiles.com/blog/2012/01/29/video-teen-readers-voice-opinions-on-the-book-that-is-the-basis-for-disneys-john-carter-a-princess-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/
I helped start a teen reading project when kids aged 12- 18 read the book and then gauge their reaction based on a questionnaire. So far all of the results have been favorable. Every time I try to put a link to the student interviews, I get flagged as spam:(
so if you go to double-u, double-u, double-u dot thejohncarterfiles dot com and click on teen reading project, you can see them there:)
Curiously, when I read A Princess of Mars back in 2004, my strongest impression was, “Ah, so this is where the whole D&D dungeon crawl ethos comes from!” (And Gary Gygax did include Edgar Rice Burroughs’s works on his suggested reading list in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide for AD&D.)
@baedergarland: Is that your project featured on the ERB site, tarzan.org?
I agree with many of the commenters above.
Calling these books racist is a blatant misunderstanding, just as ignorant as those who said the same about Mark Twain over the language in Huckleberry Finn. Getting hung up on words like ‘savage’ misses the point.
“…the others would proceed no faster than the slowest of us could go. In that little party there was not one who would desert another; yet we were of different countries, different colours, different races, different religions- and one of us was of a different world.”
_The Gods of Mars, 1913
Burroughs argues, and Carter fights, for equality among all races, while acknowledging the differences that make a diverse world.
If anything, he was MORE progressive than the makers of this upcoming Disney picture. The varied population of Barsoom was red, black, green, white, and yellow, but the cast of this film is entirely white.
@17/18 Rebecca
I was really happy to find that the prose was so readable when I revisted the first book.Your project sounds great!
@21 Daniel
Nice perspective on Burroughs maybe being more progressive than Disney. I’ll reserve judgement until I see it, but I suspect you might be correct.
“Have the inherent characteristics of John Carter been transmuted into
more memorable characters making a new John Carter paradoxically a
faux-version of himself?”
There are a lot of good questions raised in this article, Ryan.
My take is that while the other properties you mention have certainly lifted abilities, scenarios, and concepts as well as taken general inspiration from what Burroughs did – the character of John Carter himself has been largely left alone. So much so, that were a film to truly embody the man as written, he could seem fairly original in comparison to our contemporary archetypes.
I’d argue he’s exactly the kind of hero pop culture needs right now, a break from the apathy of the reluctant brooder. A hero in love without fear, leaping into the cause with abandon, committed by an involuntary righteousness instead of avoiding action until the last moment. I think a hero like that would do the Zeitgeist well.
Of course, the official film synopsis and interviews describe him as ‘war-weary’, ‘reluctant’, ‘damaged goods’, a ‘bad boy from the other side of the tacks’ and on an arc to ‘rediscover his humanity’, so I don’t expect to see that classic character on display.
Daniel and Britt,
Like you, I have my fingers crossed and will reserve judgment on the film, but I remember how Disney dealt with the thorny issue of race in their animated Tarzan a few years ago. They simply eliminated native peoples entirely from the narrative, giving us an Africa utterly devoid of black people.
Antares@14:
Racism isn’t a new thing. It’s not anachronistic to see racism in books written in the early 1900s. People have been calling out contemporary racism since at least 1600.
I read all the JC books in my youth ( a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) and I believe JC was the opposite of racist. His best frend was a green Martian, he married a red Martian, and he treated everyone fairly. If they needed and @ss-whupping, he provided one, regardless of race. religion, or planet-of-origin. He was rather sexist, though.
i have read nearly all of edgar rice burroughs books, and i am so looking forward to seeing this movie. he is still one of my favorite authors of all time. i have read the martian (11 books) and tarzan series (24 books) several times. i would love to see the special effects magic of jurassic park applied to the pellucidar or land that time forgot series. christina anne knight
Regarding your comment on the comparison of “John Carter” to Captain Jack Harkness” (Torchwood). It is more than a little coincidental that paragraph three, line one of the first novel (Princess of Mars”, John Carter writes “Mine name is John Carter although I am often called Captain Jack”
Necro thread:
John Carter of Mars married a Red Martian, and their child came from an egg. He’s way less racist than Anthony Rogers (the first version of Buck Rogers) of Armaggeddon 2419, who was fighting the “Han” (Chinese) who had invaded America, killing them all (men, women and children) without remorse. To Nowlan’s credit, thought, each version of Rogers got less and less racist as time passed. To Flash Gordon’s discredit, he always has to fight a villain based on the Yellow Peril trope.